so that the cops could book anybody who clearly wasn't in control of their vehicle,
Those laws exist, but they are tough to enforce, and the population is always taken aback when they are charged with these offenses since they are are a purely subjective assessment, and that woman in front of me putting her eyeliner on while talking on the phone was still in her lane and hadn't actually hit anyone... yet. And besides it isn't against the law to put on eyeliner and talk on the phone if she does it safely...
Banning something makes it easy to communicate to the public that they aren't allowed to do it, and that they can expect a ticket if they do. Its not some grey area where they can get away with it as long as they aren't weaving too much when the cop sees them.
And while you are correct that Ubuntu tracks Debian unstable each 6 months, that is for their intermediate releases that is not really meant to be used for production, that's what they release the LTS releases for.
LTS is intended for business and people who want things to stay the same.
But they fully encourage and expect the average user to track the fast release cycle. Its not just for early adopters and enthusiasts -- its what they want regular people using.
Same applies to VISA transactions. But nobody would ever commit 10^5 visa micro-transactions a day either for the same reason. Transaction fees would make it utterly pointless and counter productive. You'd inevitably switch to some sort of internal coins/points system for the majority of transaction and transact with VISA once a month or so.
Even iTunes already witholds processing puchases as they happen, and aggregates a day or two worth all at once to minimize their fees.
Well, why don't you stop being a cheap ass and get a rMBP instead of buying shitty asian netbooks off newegg...
I love the rMBP except for the decision to drop the ethernet port. I'd rather it weigh a bit more, have a bit more battery life, and have an ethernet port.
What gives? This is their "pro" unit after all. They finally give it hdmi without needing a dongle and then cripple the unit by requiring a dongle for Ethernet. The optical drive should still be present too. I still receive large files on DVD. (files from graphic artists, video production work, stock photography, etc.) I don't want to carry around an external drive.
Gigabit ethernet and an optical drive are 'pro' features. Wireless-n and a bag full of dongles and accessories is not an acceptable substitute.
I know some people don't need those features on their work laptop, and that's fine. They have the 'macbook air' for you.
I have a 2 year old MBP now, and would like a retina for the display, but am simply appalled that they've set it up as a choice between a high res display and and ethernet port + optical drive.
I suspect we will see the same, online stores will just charge 10 or 12 percent hoping that will cover most counties.
Even if they collected around the right amount of tax, how would they remit it? Are they going to file a tax return with every county in the country? That's pretty much completely impractical for a small / medium business to keep up with.
Around here jurisdictions require quarterly or even monthly returns, even if you are just reporting zero sales in the jurisdiction. Can you imagine registering with thousands of counties, and filing thousands of returns accross the country to remit county taxes? Nevermind the complexity of mapping your customers what county they are from in the first place. I'm guessing there's a zip code database map? Or do you zip codes cross county lines? In which case you'd have to look at the whole address.
So I sync my feeds to local storage, and then go offline. How exactly do you contact the ad network for the monetization process again?
So what?
Do you think google's monetization of web based email (aka gmail) is a flop since some users download email to local mail clients instead of using the online web interface with its ads?
there's no guarantee that I will see them, even if you place them in some out-of-band app-specific location, such a a piece of screen real estate you dedicate to the ads.
That is correct. Most people will use the web interface some of the time, if not all of the time, just like gmail. Which is working out fine for them.
Rather people working too hard for too little pay.
Hmm.. you are probably right.
And in that line of thought its particularly ironic, as the game was originally made to be played in bars, and was sponsored by Budweiser. Clearly that industry had no qualms about poking a little fun at itself.
The only controversy Tapper ever had was when it made its way to more child friendly arcades and the alcohol theme became an issue.
What about the Tapper game that's been around since the dawn of time...
You do realize Tapper was reworked to use Root Beer in most of its iterations including a version for Arcades, the version for Coleco and Atari, and even the version on Xbox Live all are "Rootbeer Tapper"... even the Tapper scene in "Wreck it Ralph"; looks like the original Tapper game, but the Bud logo is not present, and you can clearly hear a patron interrupt Tapper to order a Root Beer.
Diesel is not a suitable motor fuel for a large part of our population due to temperatures in the winter. Lower temperatures makes diesel more problematic than gasoline. In the large population centers of the north east, even gasoline cars can be difficult to start on the colder winter days.
I drove a diesel VW Jetta in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It was fine year round. The door handles freezing and breaking when you tried to open the door was a bigger concern then starting it.
Winterized diesel fuel, and good quality batteries, and the car is not really any worse than a gas car.
People drive diesels in Alaska and Iceland.. in fact here's an excerpt from an article recommending a car for use in Iceland...
"The most eco-friendly option at the moment, according to ÃsgrÃmsson, is to purchase a diesel-driven car. Diesel is widely available in Iceland."
Create a section for ad's on the page, and then put unobtrusive ads in them. Use the RSS feeds as keyword fodder to feed the ad placement engine. Sell ad placement via adsense... monetized.
Cheque please... or should i rush to patent the above since its clearly a novel invention.:p
1. 30 million people living in Iraq were in danger.
Millions of people are in danger in lots of other places, we only bother to make stern condemnations, if we bother to take note at all. Why is Iraq special? Clearly "millions of people in danger" is not why we do anything. Where are we on that with Rwanda? No, we don't really care about millions of people in other countries, it just how we pretty up an invasion to sell what we want to do for other reasons. It's like invoking "think of the children"...
2. Bush contended that Iraq had refused to abide by the terms of the cease-fire, so the initial authorization for military conflict in 1991 stood.
Likewise, that's not a reason to go to war. That's an excuse one can use if one already wants to go to war. It is not compelling us to war.
3. He said the CIA had presented evidence that Iraq had been pursuing WMD. This is the biggest point of contention.
This is also the most complicated. Without getting into the philosophy of it too much, there really isn't any moral argument that we should prevent them from having WMD. The whole thing actually mirrors the 2nd amendment controversy within the US except at the nation state level and the US is not the world government.
Deciding that other countries may not have, nor may even research weapons technology of their own that we have massive stockpiles of is pretty indefensible.
While the US is entirely within its moral right to ensure its own security I don't thnk that extends to depriving everyone else of those same rights to 'enhance our enjoyment of our own right' stands up as reasonable.
I didn't like Saddam, I don't like Kim Jong-anything, and I KNOW that them having WMDs represents an increase in risk that WMDs will be used.
But that's a risk that seems one has to take. Like the right to bear arms means that people will have guns, some of them will be bad people, and that the risk that sometimes innocent people will be hurt by them is increased. So be it.
The world is not a safe place, and oppressing other people to make it "a little bit safer for me" is not an acceptable solution.
The US is not 'benevolent dictator for life' and elevating it to that position, and bestowing upon it powers that give it a perpetual power imbalance with it's peers will not be stable in the long run. It already exploits that position and I don't see why we want to perpetuate that.
All true. Although if the sim city launch hadn't been botched so badly and instead had gone off brilliantly then perhaps the 'underperforming shares' trend might have reversed enough to preserve him.
Yes, it did. BUT, you're wrong about one thing. It isn't the "physical product" that is at issue here. it's the copyrighted work.
he actual decision makes some rather insightful observations:
Things like :
noting your microwave has software in it, and that selling your microwave made in China would now have copyright implications. -- you would need the rights holders permission to sell.
ditto your car if it was an import, or perhaps ditto your car even if it domestic if the computer module component was made abroad.
and then there's the note that product packaging is copyright, so that box of markers in a cardboard box with a picture of a dog on it... well it was made abroad and you can't re-sell it until you get permission from the photographer who took that picture.
Wiley's desired interpretation of the copyright act had far far wider implications than just books, or even media. It would have affected practically anything sold with an an instruction manual, anything with a picture on it, anything with a picture on the box, anything with software in it...
I bought my textbooks, and I didn't sell very many of them. I like having them. I'm not that unusual.
I think if they tried to go towards rented books, a market would spring up for access to the materials in a more permanent fashion. Student groups would pressure profs to select textbook options that are more flexible.
Except that the burden of proof is on her, since she destroyed her hard drives and lied to the court about it.
That's not helping her case, and maybe she should be charged with evidence tampering and perjury (and be punished or fined by the state), but that doesn't impact the damages that were actually done, and the music industry shouldn't be paid grossly more money then she damaged them as a result.
Also, no, the burden of proof to establish damages should be on the prosecution. This whole 'statutory damages' is a legal loophole that is being abused because it is grossly disproportionate to the actual damages.
If she has logs showing that she didn't distribute lots of copies,
The computer, even if it had been turned over, would not have established how many copies were distributed.
So, we presume that yes, she did distribute millions of copies and had a huge impact on the global marketplace.
Extraordinary claims like that require extraordinary evidence. The fact that she can't produce "log files" to disprove it doesn't scratch the surface of what it would take to establish a claim like that.
Why not compare it to borrowing a bunch of CDs from friends and ripping them, and then setting up a music store where people can visit with their iPods or Zunes or whathaveyou and plug in to make copies of your record catalog, and you never pay royalties to the record distributors?
She didn't "set up a music store". She installed Kazaa with its default settings to download some songs. Comparing it to "setting up a music store" is absurd. If let some have some chips and dip at a picnic I am not "setting up a restuarant".
Other than the brick and mortar aspect, what she did was exactly the same.
Other than the fact that running kazaa is not the same as opening a music store.
Moreover, what would we learn by comparing it to that? Perhaps if someone tried that we would find that like Jammie's Kazaa install, that doing something like that doesn't have any significant impact on the global marketplace after all and then what?
Back in university, people did a variety of similar things, like leaving an old computer with winamp installed and some ripped music in a student common area for anyone to use. Anyone who had access to the computer (and it was pretty much wide open to the public, could have copied files off, and I'm sure some did.) others just listened to the music while they were in the common room.
Turns out it did not single handedly destroy the music industry, and I would be just as outraged if whoever set that computer up was hung out to dry for a quarter million dollars in imaginary "damages" too. (For the record, no, they didn't "set up a music store" either.)
Actually, none of those seem ridiculous.
Yes, they are, and when extrapolated out to the larger network of fileshares even the judges called it absurd.
(In the case against limewire the plaintiffs initially claimed for statutory damages in a range from 400 Billion to 75 Trillion based on users x works x statutory infringement x wilful infringment.
The judge wrote:
"Plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877,"
That's more than the GDP of the entire world. The judge went on to called this result "absurd".
Even the low end of the range: 400 billion is widely been debunked and is considered grossly inflated.
Why should Apple pay high royalties if anyone can freely download the song via Gnutella? Maybe it's a factor in them declining a specific royalty proposal. It certainly makes economic sense.
Then they should have evidence of that. Do they? Any? Why do we need to speculate about the damage she did if they have tangible evidence of actual damage? Perhaps, because they don't have any?
But if she made millions of copies of a CD and gave them out for free outside of that Walmart, destroying their ability to sell it, then it starts looking more reasonable.
Sure, except she didn't do that. She didn't make millions of copies. And the impact she had on the global marketplace for those songs is relatively trivial.
Particularly if someone is standing next to her helping her distribute those CDs while showing advertising and making money off of all the visitors.
So charge that person. Which they did. And nobody really batted an eye when the companies that were clearly doing more than releasing innocuous software that "could" be used to share songs were sued into oblivion.
This case was never about downloading a single copy of a song, which is why that comparison has never been successful. This case was about uploading to others, and distribution rights are a lot more expensive than $1.
That comparison is about *severity of the crime* and *damage done*; it's not an attempt to directly equate shoplifting with music sharing. I could, as easily, compare it to jay-walking, letting your parking meter expire, or having more than X people gathered in a park without a permit. $200,000 fines for stuff like that is wrong.
Now if you really want to make it about the value of "distribution rights" then you should need to show that other legitimate distribution channels didn't purchase distribution rights as a result. Did Apple/itunes or Amazon or the Cable music channel decide not to acquire distribution rights because of Jammie? Was Jammie even a factor? Did Jammie's actions, by themselves, impact the rights owners ability to negotatiate? Did they have to accept less money due to Jammie? Don't be ridiculous.
Maybe in some small part yes, as Jammie was part of much larger aggregate file sharing phenomena. So go ahead and calculate how much damage filesharing did to the industry, and then divide it by about 100 million to put it in the ballpark of Jammie's portion.
Otherwise all it amounts to is units of lost sales. How many lost sales did Jammie cause? Only a halfwit would argue that Jammie is personally responsible for a quarter million in lost sales. If every Kazaa user did 200k+ in damages, then the recording industry lost 12 trillion dollars.
That doesn't pass the smell test. It doesn't matter whether you look at is as "distribution rights" or not, Jammie and people like her simply did not do that much damage.
Not saying that her punishment isn't excessive but your shoplifting analogy is wrong.
My shoplifting analogy is one of excessive punishment relative to a minor crime. If we agree the punishment is excessive relative to the crime committed then it validates the analogy.
Stealing a CD that costs $10 causes $10 worth of damages - easy.
You mean the CD that cost Walmart $3.50? That was on sale yesterday for $7, but today is $10. And since the individual was caught and the merchandise recovered unopened and undamaged then is it $0? But yes, arriving at some sort of measurement of reasonable damages is pretty easy with physical goods.
Her crime was distributing the songs and working out the true damages in lost sales is much harder.
Much harder yes. But its pretty easy to dispute the 200k+ amount. If every file sharer on the internet represented a quarter million in losses to the RIAA... then the recording industry would have been a smoking crater a decade ago.
I mean Kazaa alone represented something like 60 million users. 60 million users x 200k/user = 12 Trillion dollars. Trillion. With a T. Its ridiculous.
And so what? So for a minor civil infraction that caused virtually no measured or measurable damage to anyone we should take away her house?
People break the law all the time. Breaking the law isn't carte blanche for the anyone to take everything you have, and then some.
For her situation, with 24 songs shared, first offense. Anything over $500 is WAY out of line relative to what she did. This sort of thing belongs in small claims court.
If she had shoplifted a CD (24 songs) from a Walmart and it was a first offense a $200,000+ fine would be utterly outrageous.
The real question is this: is a central authority really a bad thing here?
The really does crop up as the crux of the debate. The problem I see with a central-authority is that it pre-supposes that we can have the system in the first place, and that's not a question of the math and abstract theory it runs on.
"[...] we should be able to spend money anonymously, and we should be able to do so securely. We also want to ensure that nobody can be attacked the way Wikileaks was attacked, so there must be a way for a party to continue to receive and spend money without relying on the authority and without sacrificing security."
Yes, those are all things 'we' want. However it is not necessarily what the parties who would act as the central authority want, nor what the governments who would regulate the central authority want. Government is going to cite criminal activity, they are going to cite pedophiles, they are going to ponder the ease of tax collection, they are going to recall that they 'do' want to be able to cut the flow of cash to wikileaks if they wish.
Companies will weigh in on how anonymous cash enables fraud, prevents them from tracing or reimbursing stolen money. Advertisers will desperately pressure for the ability to know who is spending money on what. The commercial entities engaged in building and running the central authority infrastructure will want to insert themselves in the middle so they can sell that data to the advertisers, so that they can charge all kinds of rents and transaction fees for every transaction.
I think collectively they will inevitably find the temptation to implement a protocol with centralized identity tracking and central clearing to be virtually irresistible. It's much simpler to set up, and companies and governments are highly motivated to do it that way.
So while a central-authority based secure anonymous system could exist theoretically. I think the entrenched stakeholders would prevent us from having one. The old academic Internet was decentralized: usenet, email, IRC, and so forth. The current corporate internet is all about companies injecting themselves into the center of things - facebook, twitter, skype, google. They aren't interested in systems that aren't wholly dependent on them being at the center of everything.
The candidates to be a central authority don't want to build what Chaum is describing -- they want to be Paypal.
And to establish a central authority, in defiance of government and corporate interest? You better be decentralized because otherwise your fate will be that of Napster.
Presumably anyone who believes in God must be humble?
I can't see how that would follow.
The incorrect assumption is that humility is inherently a good thing.
You are going to have to make some sort of case for that. Just declaring that all along we were all wrong about humility being a virtue isn't going to cut it.
I think of it more as a quality like courage: if you're a brave terrorist or Nazi, you're still a terrorist or Nazi.
Godwinning the thread is not the best way to make your case. And the argument doesn't really work either; wasn't George Washington a brave terrorist?
Snow Lion is *trying* to turn my laptop into an tablet, while Microsoft said "*Try*? There is only Do and Do Not. There is no try." And then they *did* turn my PC into a tablet.
That said Windows 8 is 3 steps forward and then one step off a cliff. There is a LOT to recommend 8, but the start menu/charms bar/new UI thing just doesn't make sense on a desktop.
It works on a phone. It works on a tablet. It even works great on an HTPC.
And I would not hesitate to use win8 on a desktop with some classic shell stuff installed and am considering upgrading my win7 desktop. A lot of 'poweruser' stuff I do is better. Win8 is faster, the new task manager is great, multi-monitor support is better.
Add in a classic shell / start menu alternative (of which there are several) and its a modest upgrade from 7. I agree I shouldn't have to do add 3rd party software to 'fix it', but it does fix it and then it IS better.
Slashdot Mirror
so that the cops could book anybody who clearly wasn't in control of their vehicle,
Those laws exist, but they are tough to enforce, and the population is always taken aback when they are charged with these offenses since they are are a purely subjective assessment, and that woman in front of me putting her eyeliner on while talking on the phone was still in her lane and hadn't actually hit anyone... yet. And besides it isn't against the law to put on eyeliner and talk on the phone if she does it safely...
Banning something makes it easy to communicate to the public that they aren't allowed to do it, and that they can expect a ticket if they do. Its not some grey area where they can get away with it as long as they aren't weaving too much when the cop sees them.
And while you are correct that Ubuntu tracks Debian unstable each 6 months, that is for their intermediate releases that is not really meant to be used for production, that's what they release the LTS releases for.
LTS is intended for business and people who want things to stay the same.
But they fully encourage and expect the average user to track the fast release cycle. Its not just for early adopters and enthusiasts -- its what they want regular people using.
Same applies to VISA transactions. But nobody would ever commit 10^5 visa micro-transactions a day either for the same reason. Transaction fees would make it utterly pointless and counter productive. You'd inevitably switch to some sort of internal coins/points system for the majority of transaction and transact with VISA once a month or so.
Even iTunes already witholds processing puchases as they happen, and aggregates a day or two worth all at once to minimize their fees.
Well, why don't you stop being a cheap ass and get a rMBP instead of buying shitty asian netbooks off newegg...
I love the rMBP except for the decision to drop the ethernet port. I'd rather it weigh a bit more, have a bit more battery life, and have an ethernet port.
What gives? This is their "pro" unit after all. They finally give it hdmi without needing a dongle and then cripple the unit by requiring a dongle for Ethernet. The optical drive should still be present too. I still receive large files on DVD. (files from graphic artists, video production work, stock photography, etc.) I don't want to carry around an external drive.
Gigabit ethernet and an optical drive are 'pro' features. Wireless-n and a bag full of dongles and accessories is not an acceptable substitute.
I know some people don't need those features on their work laptop, and that's fine. They have the 'macbook air' for you.
I have a 2 year old MBP now, and would like a retina for the display, but am simply appalled that they've set it up as a choice between a high res display and and ethernet port + optical drive.
GPL doesnt "make the software really free" unless you subscribe to a particular definition of freedom which excludes developer freedom.
Much like liberty doesn't make people really free unless you subscribe to a particular definition of freedom which excludes jailor freedom.
Any definition of freedom that doesn't let me put other people into cages just isn't really freedom.
I suspect we will see the same, online stores will just charge 10 or 12 percent hoping that will cover most counties.
Even if they collected around the right amount of tax, how would they remit it? Are they going to file a tax return with every county in the country? That's pretty much completely impractical for a small / medium business to keep up with.
Around here jurisdictions require quarterly or even monthly returns, even if you are just reporting zero sales in the jurisdiction. Can you imagine registering with thousands of counties, and filing thousands of returns accross the country to remit county taxes? Nevermind the complexity of mapping your customers what county they are from in the first place. I'm guessing there's a zip code database map? Or do you zip codes cross county lines? In which case you'd have to look at the whole address.
Well, one could calculate the total amount of force used by the hacker while pressing his keys and retaliate proportionally.
So if the hacker's been pounding away on his beloved Model-M, then we can drop a bunker buster on him and call it even.
His neighbors would probably appreciate the quiet too.
So I sync my feeds to local storage, and then go offline. How exactly do you contact the ad network for the monetization process again?
So what?
Do you think google's monetization of web based email (aka gmail) is a flop since some users download email to local mail clients instead of using the online web interface with its ads?
there's no guarantee that I will see them, even if you place them in some out-of-band app-specific location, such a a piece of screen real estate you dedicate to the ads.
That is correct. Most people will use the web interface some of the time, if not all of the time, just like gmail. Which is working out fine for them.
Rather people working too hard for too little pay.
Hmm.. you are probably right.
And in that line of thought its particularly ironic, as the game was originally made to be played in bars, and was sponsored by Budweiser. Clearly that industry had no qualms about poking a little fun at itself.
The only controversy Tapper ever had was when it made its way to more child friendly arcades and the alcohol theme became an issue.
What about the Tapper game that's been around since the dawn of time ...
You do realize Tapper was reworked to use Root Beer in most of its iterations including a version for Arcades, the version for Coleco and Atari, and even the version on Xbox Live all are "Rootbeer Tapper"... even the Tapper scene in "Wreck it Ralph"; looks like the original Tapper game, but the Bud logo is not present, and you can clearly hear a patron interrupt Tapper to order a Root Beer.
Probably not the best example.
Diesel is not a suitable motor fuel for a large part of our population due to temperatures in the winter. Lower temperatures makes diesel more problematic than gasoline. In the large population centers of the north east, even gasoline cars can be difficult to start on the colder winter days.
I drove a diesel VW Jetta in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It was fine year round. The door handles freezing and breaking when you tried to open the door was a bigger concern then starting it.
Winterized diesel fuel, and good quality batteries, and the car is not really any worse than a gas car.
People drive diesels in Alaska and Iceland.. in fact here's an excerpt from an article recommending a car for use in Iceland...
"The most eco-friendly option at the moment, according to ÃsgrÃmsson, is to purchase a diesel-driven car. Diesel is widely available in Iceland."
http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/search/news/Default.asp?ew_0_a_id=289379
I think the whole diesel is bad in cold weather is 30+ year old 'common knowledge' that isn't valid anymore.
I just don't see how it matter what tech made the gun parts.
Kind of like how p2p file sharing is legally no different then copyright infringement committed with a printing press right?
Except that its practical impact completely reshaped the landscape. 3D printing has the ability to be similarly game changing.
I don't need to learn how to use complicated tools. I don't have to learn how to read complicated technical diagrams so that I no what to build.
I go to my friends house, download a gun file, and press print. Legally it may be the same, but in every other way it completely changes everything.
How would you monetize Google Reader?
Create a section for ad's on the page, and then put unobtrusive ads in them. Use the RSS feeds as keyword fodder to feed the ad placement engine. Sell ad placement via adsense... monetized.
Cheque please... or should i rush to patent the above since its clearly a novel invention. :p
1. 30 million people living in Iraq were in danger.
Millions of people are in danger in lots of other places, we only bother to make stern condemnations, if we bother to take note at all. Why is Iraq special? Clearly "millions of people in danger" is not why we do anything. Where are we on that with Rwanda? No, we don't really care about millions of people in other countries, it just how we pretty up an invasion to sell what we want to do for other reasons. It's like invoking "think of the children"...
2. Bush contended that Iraq had refused to abide by the terms of the cease-fire, so the initial authorization for military conflict in 1991 stood.
Likewise, that's not a reason to go to war. That's an excuse one can use if one already wants to go to war. It is not compelling us to war.
3. He said the CIA had presented evidence that Iraq had been pursuing WMD. This is the biggest point of contention.
This is also the most complicated. Without getting into the philosophy of it too much, there really isn't any moral argument that we should prevent them from having WMD. The whole thing actually mirrors the 2nd amendment controversy within the US except at the nation state level and the US is not the world government.
Deciding that other countries may not have, nor may even research weapons technology of their own that we have massive stockpiles of is pretty indefensible.
While the US is entirely within its moral right to ensure its own security I don't thnk that extends to depriving everyone else of those same rights to 'enhance our enjoyment of our own right' stands up as reasonable.
I didn't like Saddam, I don't like Kim Jong-anything, and I KNOW that them having WMDs represents an increase in risk that WMDs will be used.
But that's a risk that seems one has to take. Like the right to bear arms means that people will have guns, some of them will be bad people, and that the risk that sometimes innocent people will be hurt by them is increased. So be it.
The world is not a safe place, and oppressing other people to make it "a little bit safer for me" is not an acceptable solution.
The US is not 'benevolent dictator for life' and elevating it to that position, and bestowing upon it powers that give it a perpetual power imbalance with it's peers will not be stable in the long run. It already exploits that position and I don't see why we want to perpetuate that.
All true. Although if the sim city launch hadn't been botched so badly and instead had gone off brilliantly then perhaps the 'underperforming shares' trend might have reversed enough to preserve him.
Yes, it did. BUT, you're wrong about one thing. It isn't the "physical product" that is at issue here. it's the copyrighted work.
he actual decision makes some rather insightful observations:
Things like :
noting your microwave has software in it, and that selling your microwave made in China would now have copyright implications. -- you would need the rights holders permission to sell.
ditto your car if it was an import, or perhaps ditto your car even if it domestic if the computer module component was made abroad.
and then there's the note that product packaging is copyright, so that box of markers in a cardboard box with a picture of a dog on it... well it was made abroad and you can't re-sell it until you get permission from the photographer who took that picture.
Wiley's desired interpretation of the copyright act had far far wider implications than just books, or even media. It would have affected practically anything sold with an an instruction manual, anything with a picture on it, anything with a picture on the box, anything with software in it...
I bought my textbooks, and I didn't sell very many of them. I like having them. I'm not that unusual.
I think if they tried to go towards rented books, a market would spring up for access to the materials in a more permanent fashion. Student groups would pressure profs to select textbook options that are more flexible.
Except that the burden of proof is on her, since she destroyed her hard drives and lied to the court about it.
That's not helping her case, and maybe she should be charged with evidence tampering and perjury (and be punished or fined by the state), but that doesn't impact the damages that were actually done, and the music industry shouldn't be paid grossly more money then she damaged them as a result.
Also, no, the burden of proof to establish damages should be on the prosecution. This whole 'statutory damages' is a legal loophole that is being abused because it is grossly disproportionate to the actual damages.
If she has logs showing that she didn't distribute lots of copies,
The computer, even if it had been turned over, would not have established how many copies were distributed.
So, we presume that yes, she did distribute millions of copies and had a huge impact on the global marketplace.
Extraordinary claims like that require extraordinary evidence. The fact that she can't produce "log files" to disprove it doesn't scratch the surface of what it would take to establish a claim like that.
Why not compare it to borrowing a bunch of CDs from friends and ripping them, and then setting up a music store where people can visit with their iPods or Zunes or whathaveyou and plug in to make copies of your record catalog, and you never pay royalties to the record distributors?
She didn't "set up a music store". She installed Kazaa with its default settings to download some songs. Comparing it to "setting up a music store" is absurd. If let some have some chips and dip at a picnic I am not "setting up a restuarant".
Other than the brick and mortar aspect, what she did was exactly the same.
Other than the fact that running kazaa is not the same as opening a music store.
Moreover, what would we learn by comparing it to that? Perhaps if someone tried that we would find that like Jammie's Kazaa install, that doing something like that doesn't have any significant impact on the global marketplace after all and then what?
Back in university, people did a variety of similar things, like leaving an old computer with winamp installed and some ripped music in a student common area for anyone to use. Anyone who had access to the computer (and it was pretty much wide open to the public, could have copied files off, and I'm sure some did.) others just listened to the music while they were in the common room.
Turns out it did not single handedly destroy the music industry, and I would be just as outraged if whoever set that computer up was hung out to dry for a quarter million dollars in imaginary "damages" too. (For the record, no, they didn't "set up a music store" either.)
Actually, none of those seem ridiculous.
Yes, they are, and when extrapolated out to the larger network of fileshares even the judges called it absurd.
(In the case against limewire the plaintiffs initially claimed for statutory damages in a range from 400 Billion to 75 Trillion based on users x works x statutory infringement x wilful infringment.
The judge wrote:
That's more than the GDP of the entire world. The judge went on to called this result "absurd".
Even the low end of the range: 400 billion is widely been debunked and is considered grossly inflated.
Why should Apple pay high royalties if anyone can freely download the song via Gnutella? Maybe it's a factor in them declining a specific royalty proposal. It certainly makes economic sense.
Then they should have evidence of that. Do they? Any? Why do we need to speculate about the damage she did if they have tangible evidence of actual damage? Perhaps, because they don't have any?
Again, the burden of proof here falls
But if she made millions of copies of a CD and gave them out for free outside of that Walmart, destroying their ability to sell it, then it starts looking more reasonable.
Sure, except she didn't do that. She didn't make millions of copies. And the impact she had on the global marketplace for those songs is relatively trivial.
Particularly if someone is standing next to her helping her distribute those CDs while showing advertising and making money off of all the visitors.
So charge that person. Which they did. And nobody really batted an eye when the companies that were clearly doing more than releasing innocuous software that "could" be used to share songs were sued into oblivion.
This case was never about downloading a single copy of a song, which is why that comparison has never been successful. This case was about uploading to others, and distribution rights are a lot more expensive than $1.
That comparison is about *severity of the crime* and *damage done*; it's not an attempt to directly equate shoplifting with music sharing. I could, as easily, compare it to jay-walking, letting your parking meter expire, or having more than X people gathered in a park without a permit. $200,000 fines for stuff like that is wrong.
Now if you really want to make it about the value of "distribution rights" then you should need to show that other legitimate distribution channels didn't purchase distribution rights as a result. Did Apple/itunes or Amazon or the Cable music channel decide not to acquire distribution rights because of Jammie? Was Jammie even a factor? Did Jammie's actions, by themselves, impact the rights owners ability to negotatiate? Did they have to accept less money due to Jammie? Don't be ridiculous.
Maybe in some small part yes, as Jammie was part of much larger aggregate file sharing phenomena. So go ahead and calculate how much damage filesharing did to the industry, and then divide it by about 100 million to put it in the ballpark of Jammie's portion.
Otherwise all it amounts to is units of lost sales. How many lost sales did Jammie cause? Only a halfwit would argue that Jammie is personally responsible for a quarter million in lost sales. If every Kazaa user did 200k+ in damages, then the recording industry lost 12 trillion dollars.
That doesn't pass the smell test. It doesn't matter whether you look at is as "distribution rights" or not, Jammie and people like her simply did not do that much damage.
Not saying that her punishment isn't excessive but your shoplifting analogy is wrong.
My shoplifting analogy is one of excessive punishment relative to a minor crime. If we agree the punishment is excessive relative to the crime committed then it validates the analogy.
Stealing a CD that costs $10 causes $10 worth of damages - easy.
You mean the CD that cost Walmart $3.50? That was on sale yesterday for $7, but today is $10. And since the individual was caught and the merchandise recovered unopened and undamaged then is it $0? But yes, arriving at some sort of measurement of reasonable damages is pretty easy with physical goods.
Her crime was distributing the songs and working out the true damages in lost sales is much harder.
Much harder yes. But its pretty easy to dispute the 200k+ amount. If every file sharer on the internet represented a quarter million in losses to the RIAA... then the recording industry would have been a smoking crater a decade ago.
I mean Kazaa alone represented something like 60 million users. 60 million users x 200k/user = 12 Trillion dollars. Trillion. With a T. Its ridiculous.
She broke the law.
And so what? So for a minor civil infraction that caused virtually no measured or measurable damage to anyone we should take away her house?
People break the law all the time. Breaking the law isn't carte blanche for the anyone to take everything you have, and then some.
For her situation, with 24 songs shared, first offense. Anything over $500 is WAY out of line relative to what she did. This sort of thing belongs in small claims court.
If she had shoplifted a CD (24 songs) from a Walmart and it was a first offense a $200,000+ fine would be utterly outrageous.
The real question is this: is a central authority really a bad thing here?
The really does crop up as the crux of the debate. The problem I see with a central-authority is that it pre-supposes that we can have the system in the first place, and that's not a question of the math and abstract theory it runs on.
"[...] we should be able to spend money anonymously, and we should be able to do so securely. We also want to ensure that nobody can be attacked the way Wikileaks was attacked, so there must be a way for a party to continue to receive and spend money without relying on the authority and without sacrificing security."
Yes, those are all things 'we' want. However it is not necessarily what the parties who would act as the central authority want, nor what the governments who would regulate the central authority want. Government is going to cite criminal activity, they are going to cite pedophiles, they are going to ponder the ease of tax collection, they are going to recall that they 'do' want to be able to cut the flow of cash to wikileaks if they wish.
Companies will weigh in on how anonymous cash enables fraud, prevents them from tracing or reimbursing stolen money. Advertisers will desperately pressure for the ability to know who is spending money on what. The commercial entities engaged in building and running the central authority infrastructure will want to insert themselves in the middle so they can sell that data to the advertisers, so that they can charge all kinds of rents and transaction fees for every transaction.
I think collectively they will inevitably find the temptation to implement a protocol with centralized identity tracking and central clearing to be virtually irresistible. It's much simpler to set up, and companies and governments are highly motivated to do it that way.
So while a central-authority based secure anonymous system could exist theoretically. I think the entrenched stakeholders would prevent us from having one. The old academic Internet was decentralized: usenet, email, IRC, and so forth. The current corporate internet is all about companies injecting themselves into the center of things - facebook, twitter, skype, google. They aren't interested in systems that aren't wholly dependent on them being at the center of everything.
The candidates to be a central authority don't want to build what Chaum is describing -- they want to be Paypal.
And to establish a central authority, in defiance of government and corporate interest? You better be decentralized because otherwise your fate will be that of Napster.
Spoken like a good member of the flock.
Or anyone else who can see the truth of the matter. Some Catholics are humble, others are arrogant.
Belonging to a religion and beleiving its dogma doesn't somehow automatically make one 'arrogant'. That's absurd on the face of it.
Presumably anyone who believes in God must be humble?
I can't see how that would follow.
The incorrect assumption is that humility is inherently a good thing.
You are going to have to make some sort of case for that. Just declaring that all along we were all wrong about humility being a virtue isn't going to cut it.
I think of it more as a quality like courage: if you're a brave terrorist or Nazi, you're still a terrorist or Nazi.
Godwinning the thread is not the best way to make your case. And the argument doesn't really work either; wasn't George Washington a brave terrorist?
OS X Leopard is the best desktop I know.
I agree. Although I like Win7 an awful lot too.
Snow Lion is *trying* to turn my laptop into an tablet, while Microsoft said "*Try*? There is only Do and Do Not. There is no try." And then they *did* turn my PC into a tablet.
That said Windows 8 is 3 steps forward and then one step off a cliff. There is a LOT to recommend 8, but the start menu/charms bar/new UI thing just doesn't make sense on a desktop.
It works on a phone. It works on a tablet. It even works great on an HTPC.
And I would not hesitate to use win8 on a desktop with some classic shell stuff installed and am considering upgrading my win7 desktop. A lot of 'poweruser' stuff I do is better. Win8 is faster, the new task manager is great, multi-monitor support is better.
Add in a classic shell / start menu alternative (of which there are several) and its a modest upgrade from 7. I agree I shouldn't have to do add 3rd party software to 'fix it', but it does fix it and then it IS better.